Pink NHS Specs,1975 (Life’s a Journey Series, Week 14)

This post is part of a weekly series of ‘link-up’ Posts which reflect on life’s journey, old memories and family stories (see below for more info).

After my semi-negligent parents failed to notice that I spent the first 8 years of my life sitting a cosy 3 feet away from the TV set, the Optician arrived at school. This innocuous event turned out to be the worst day of my life. An event from which I have never recovered, for it resulted in the discovery that I couldn’t see a bloody thing. This, in turn resulted in a trip to the High Street Optician, which resulted in the provision of a pair of pig-ugly NHS spectacles and a lot of tears.

No photographs remain of my butt-ugly days in those pink monstrosities (I may have played a hand in their mutilation, or more likely didn’t wear them enough to actually be caught on celluloid in them). I imagine that I looked something like this…..

I can clearly remember the day we chose these pink beasties. Led by my parents, who with retrospect obviously thought that FREE was more important than a lifetime of self-esteem for their beloved 8 year old daughter, I was presented with a display board which held 3 options:-

If the expression “What the Actual F?!” had existed in 1975 then I surely would have used it. I waited for the trendy stuff to come out, but was met with a stoney silence. This, it seems, was to be the first day of the rest of my disappointing life. Pink it was.

It is hard to appreciate the splendour of an in-focus office block when you are viewing it through tear-stained pink beer bottles. I remember declaring my surprise that the windows in our house actually had square corners, and my Mother emitted a muffled “Sh**, I didn’t realise she was THAT bad.” Or I may have imagined that last bit, since it’s probably more a commentary on my own mothering norms than hers…

At 18, I fair sprinted to the queue for contact lenses, and these have been my friends ever since. I almost wish I still had those godawful frames so that I could pop them on for you and Instagram myself up. But it would only serve to remind me just how much worse my sight has got since then, so best left alone, methinks!

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I well remember the NHS specs. My mother taught me to read, write and knit before I went to school. No one knew I needed specs until a year into infants school when I was placed at the back of the class and the teacher wrote on the black board in red chalk and I simply could not see it. I was the only child in my school who wore glasses and since my surname was FUDGE which was bad enough I was called Four Eyes Fudge which made me cry. The most embarassing moment of many at infants school was when I left the dreaded specs at home one day and my Father came running into the playgroud waving them at me.

OMG how devastating! I had a friend (the aforementioned Jill) who used to fold her specs (blue) and put them on the table, then when she wanted to see the blackboard she would pick them up like a sort of ‘monacle’ and hold them to her eyes, then put them down again! Weird girl. I HATED wearing them and still do. The optician told my Mum that I’d probably grow out of it by age 18. LMAO, I’m almost 45 now!!!!

Oh, I feel your pain. I had the same horrors, and blue ones later when I refused the pink ones. Although I hardly ever wore the atrocities outside the classroom, I can remember sitting on the top deck of a bus in Edinburgh and being astonished at the number of clocks there were. As most of them were more thank six feet away, I hadn’t seen them before. I got contact lenses when I started to drive. My optician told me I wasn’t safe to cross the road by myself, so I’m lucky I survived!

I found a job washing dishes at the age of 13 and saved for months to get contact lenses. My mother wouldn’t consider them until my prescription “stopped changing.” My next set of paychecks were to buy a duffle coat for my school uniform to replace the a-line monstrosity my mother also thought was a good idea. Seriously, she could not have done a better job of gearing me up as a complete social pariah. God, I was miserable as a teenager…